Tuesday, June 7, 2016

Happy Mango Season!!!

Hello Family,

Happy Mango Season!!!!!! Mangos are growing on trees everywhere and
everyone is going crazy! We are eating tons of mangos and drinking mango juice
all the time. It is amazing. Everyone is giving us mangos, and we are giving
everyone mangos!!!

I hope that everything is okay with you guys. I miss you all and
love you guys so much!!!! You guys had trek last week....right? How'd that go? I
imagine that you guys are all really tired. I have so many great memories of
when we went on trek as a family. It was awesome!!!!

Everything here in the mission is going awesome. Everyone feels the change
that is coming....and we are all excited and sad at the same time. I am really
going to miss President Morales, but I am also excited to meet our new
president....President Haws. President Morales is leaving in three weeks!!! His
three years are almost up, and really him and Sister Morales are very sad. We
are going to have a conference with him on Friday. I think it will be the last
time that I get to see him:( I am really going to miss him.

Elder Cavenee says that thousands and thousands of people live in these apartments.

It has cooled down here. The beginning of the week was horrible. There is so
much dirt in the streets here because it is just so hot. That dirt makes you
cough all day long, I've had a cough since I got here. It's not the coolest
situation , but it's alright. Friday night it started to rain....and it rained
hard!!!!! It was the best. Friday night I used my blanket for the first time in
a while. Saturday morning, it was even hotter than before. Everything was super
wet, and so when the sun came out....it got so humid because of all of the
evaporation. It was a very sticky day. Later in the afternoon the storms came
back and it has been raining on and off since. It is a lot cooler here now!!!!
All the streets are covered in mud and flooding. It's awesome.

So....this week was great. Last Monday we went to the church early with
about half the zone to play volleyball. It was a ton of fun. We played 6 on 6
for several hours. We went home sunburned, but it was a ton of fun.

Our baptism last Saturday fell through. Everything was going right as
planned all week long. Anuar was very excited and everything. He passed his
interview, and we went and visited him on Friday night to make sure he was ready
for Saturday. He told us everything was good. On Saturday morning, he texted us
and told us that he couldn't get baptized. We were devestated. He is
alright....just something happened and he has to wait a week. We had a really
good lesson with him on Saturday night, and he got down on his knees and asked
for forgiveness. You could feel the spirit so strong. We are working with him
this week, to see if he can make it this weekend. Anuar is a really good guy. We
teach him in his store by the side of the road, and he always invites everyone
that walks by to listen to us. He wants to be a misionary. He has a really big
heart and is such a great guy.

We had a really interesting week with Lady and her daughters. On Tuesday we
went for a lesson with them, but Suari and Yahaira weren't there...so we started
talking with their mom. She really opened up to us and shared with us some
problems that she is going through...that we didn't know about. She was very
stressed out and shared with us that she didn't believe in God anymore because
of all the suffering she has gone through. We tried to comfort her and explain
that Christ has felt everything she is feeling, but she was just so distraught.
She told us that she didn't want to listen to us anymore. It was very sad. Her
daughters came home and we were teaching a lesson....Lady groaned...stood up and
just left. It was very hard to see how heartbroken she was. We prayed with her
daughters, and left. (didn't want to be alone with them in the house)

Tuesday night, Elder Mendez and I knelt in prayer asking God how we could
touch the heart of Lady. How we could invite the Spirit in to touch her and help
her understand. After praying, we both thought of a video ''Touch of the Masters
Hand''. Niether of us had seen this video in some time, so we put it into our
DVD and checked it out. It was perfect. We planned a lesson with this video, and
on Wednesday we went by to share it. Lady was still very cold with us, but she
listened and watched the video. At the end, she was participating and things
seemed a little better.

On Thursday when we showed up, there was a complete change!!! She and her
daughters greeted us with cookies!!!!! (I have not eaten cookies in months.) She
was so happy, and participated in the lesson. Same thing on Friday and Saturday.
She promised us that this week they will go to church with us. We are very
excited for that!!!!

Storm rolling in

On Thursday we had zone class (it was really weird not teaching it) and it
went pretty good. We talked a lot about the doctrine of Christ. Faith,
Repentance, Baptism, the Gift of the Holy Ghost and Enduring to the End.
Basically if we really understand the doctrine of Christ we will baptize more.
The mission is pushing really hard to have a ton of baptisms before President
heads out. We should be baptizing a lot this month.

We've been struggling this week finding news, but we are heading out with
some members this week that hopefully will be taking us to visit non members
that they know. We also have a lot of contacts to visit that we did last
week.

Anyways...the work is going good. I am walking my shoes off. They are
getting pretty close to wearing through. I think they'll last a little longer
though. Elder Mendez and I are just putting our faith in the Lord, and our
shoulder to the wheel and just having a good time!!!